There are a million stories in the naked city - and NYPD detectives are finally getting a chance to tell their favorites.

Some 50 retired sleuths will give voice to their oddest or most haunting cases in an 11-week series, "Watching the Detectives," that debuts Sunday night at 9 p.m. on A&E's Biography channel.

"We asked them to tell their best bar stories. The characters in their cases are straight out of central casting," said Executive Producer Kevin Kaufman.

Like the 400-pound enforcer who confessed to retired Detective Andy Copertino that he'd shot and killed his loanshark boss over a gambling debt. In a scene out of "Weekend at Bernie's," the killer put a hat on the corpse's head, strapped a seat belt across his chest and drove north, telling toll clerks his buddy was napping.

Copertino convinced the suspect to show him where he'd buried the body upstate - then had to schlep the stinking, maggoty evidence to the 105th Precinct stationhouse in Queens.Cops hung the evidence bags out to air on a rooftop clothesline, under guard, of course.

"This is what you call murder - dirty laundry style - in New York City," Copertino dryly tells the camera.

His deadpan delivery is just what Kaufman was looking for when he hatched the idea for the series and approached NYPD Detective Rick Tirelli, an "NYPD Blue" and "Pride and Glory" consultant. It was Tirelli's job to round up retired gumshoes and check their tales for accuracy.